


Human

by orphan_account



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arkham is bad yo, But it's mainly just sad I'm sorry, Depressing Themes, Fluff and Angst, Lila is a slut and I have too much hatred for her, M/M, Miah alone, Sibling Incest, Swearing, mentions of abuse, mild bad language, then Jerome alone, then them both together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 17:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Being a teenager was never easy, Jerome knew that for sure. He just seemed to have picked the shortest damn straw in existence, and he wanted out.OrThree moments from Jeremiah and Jerome's teenage years.





	Human

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, sorry it's been a while. I ended up orphaning my works due to complicated personal reasons, I hope you may understand. I am sorry for any language errors. I sound extremely stilted here, but please understand the times I an currently going through.  
I hope you enjoy.  
:)

He was scared. 

Jeremiah didn't like being in the dark. Being separated from Jerome, kept in utter shadow upon _where is he?_ and _what is he doing?_ and, hell, if he was even still breathing. Maybe he wasn't. He didn't know. Maybe they'd made him useless. Spat on, ripped apart and discared, just like that, goodbye, the end. He could be a lifeless, rotting corpse by now, skin slowly peeling, flaking away, a washed out grey splashed with dull greens and purples, battered and bruised left and right, clothes tattered and bones beginning to crumble. All with that stupid, merrily maniacal smile plastered across his stupid, merrily maniacal face like it had been vandalised, twisted and disfigured, clothes tattered and blood cold. All while he was swept away and sat to the side, deductive, calculating eyes covered with a harsh, caring hand and reassuring kisses to the forehead, arms held behind his back in a loving, falsely familial embrace that was so obnoxiously fake that he felt a genuine sickening churn in his stomach just thinking about it. She was a dolled up, breath-constricting straitjacket on him, and it hurt. He hated it.

He felt so immensely nauseous.

It really, really hurt. 

But maybe it was the bond the two shared converting and transferring things again, passing thoughts around like such a sweet little box of chocolates, picked from and fussed over and desperately bad, so anyone could stick their grubby little hands in and take and take and take. Greed disgusted Jeremiah, yet that's all he had. All he wanted to do was take, yet the overwhelming urge to put it all back, to leave it be, was a knife to the heart and a wrenching _twist._ Jerome was the same.

But no. The comparison made his teeth grit, and before all... this had happened, he would've huffed out a laugh and dismissed the thought until it came back, right on time while he lay in bed, muttering frantically, holding his big brother close and breathing him in, his brain rushing and jumping and calculating until the other smiled and told him to stop thinking so loudly. But now that was all that he could do. They were so different, such colliding forces, so backwards, so intertwined, so alike, so similar, so connected, so one and so together that the lines between them blurred and their great minds aligned, locking into place, blissfully trapped forever.

Yet it didn't irk him at all. When his brain worked, Jerome could be brilliant. He could be so beautiful. Jeremiah wanted these interactions, he wanted to be tricked by him, he wanted the pain, the fascination, wanted to cling onto him and never let go, he wanted to stay with him, he wanted to love him, he wanted to need him. His posture loosened up at little, defeated, and he smiled solemnly. He supposed he already did.

What he was irritated about, however, was that a the moment, Jeremiah didn't know a thing. He couldn't work out a single detail, and that made him feel so immensely useless. All he could do was worry and unscramble, but now he was as good as none. What was he doing? What could he have done to help? What is he doing wrong?

He knew that he was gone. 

Jerome was gone.

He rolled over and reached out blindly for something that wasn't there. Something he could never have.

Being a teenager was a mess.

__-'-__

Time went on. Jerome supposed that it always would, whether he liked it or not. The usual morning routine applied. Get kicked outside the rusted old trailer, sit on the cheap, plastic step, eat some shitty piece of week old bread that he couldn't even stomach before vomiting it up in the nearest patch of foot-flattened shrubs, and heading back inside. Get a few bruises, get his uncle off a couple of times- the usual. Sometimes he spat on him, but uncle Zach always hit him harder when he did it. Sometimes he got his woven belt out to switch it up, keep him on his toes, oh so eager and having _so much fun._ He must really love Jerome if he's doing unnecessary things for solely his pain.

He wondered whether his brother had any bruises in the same spots. Maybe they could match! He always thought that they'd gone together so wonderfully well. Not that they were together now. Yeah, to put it plainly, he was being used. He was being kissed, he was being insulted, he was being touched, he was being praised. But it wasn't by the right person. Far, far from it, to tell the truth.

He missed him. Sometimes he'd look into the reflective surface of the oven door, or puddles from rainy days, at his own reflection, just to not let himself forget the beauty he was missing out on. Not that Jerome himself could ever compare. Jeremiah was waking up to their empty bed, no broken crockery or disembodied limbs making their way into drawers to make Jeremiah jump like before. Jerome liked to keep him alive, even when he himself wasn't.

The biggest rush came when he heard it.

The most sinful, lewd and vocal moan he'd ever heard that screamed to him _get out right now. Take the chance, get out and don't look back. _

_Get out._

So that's exactly what he did.

His brain plunged underwater, hazy and disorienting, and when he resurfaced his senses hit him worse than _he_ had less than ten minutes ago. His feet were being torn to shreds by the jagged tarmac ground, he was weaving between the trailers in a desperate struggle to get to him, to be free again, and his brain was hazy, he was dissociated and tired and he_ wanted Jeremiah._

He knocked on the door, tears still lightly spilling as he heard a grumble from inside. 

"Wake up, sleepy head."

His voice finally, finally, echoes forth not just from within his mind while he slept, but here and now.

"Mm... what?"

"I'm here. I'm real. I'm alive."

How many nights has Jeremiah dreamt of this day? He ran to the door with almost obsessive haste, eyes wide and deprived hands reaching out to tear at the door handle. He felt like falling to his knees, in relief, in gratitude, in awe of the stupid ginger maniac in front of him.

"You look awful." The words slip from his lips unexpectedly and he bites back any more, his brother laughing and patting him meekly on the shoulder, his gaze lowering almost in embarrassment, feeling such inferiority that he had to close his eyes for a moment and wetten his lips. Jeremiah finds himself momentarily unable to move or look away. As if Jerome might fade away, back into the shadows and his helpless dreams if he stops staring. Jerome's eyes finally rise to meet his own once again and Jeremiah's next breath shudders out. Weight falls off Jerome's shoulders visibly, and he smiled again, gripping his brother's shoulder for dear life, his fingers bunching up the soft fabric of his shirt.

"I will never abandon you, m'kay?" Jerome croaks out, and his throat is dry, and Jeremiah is worried, but he nods, one hand hovering at Jerome's elbow, in case he should pull away again. Oh, how many times had he longed to be alone with him like now. To dismiss all his trouble and pitiful self hatred in silent awe. He longs to reach out and touch, to reassure himself that the man who saves him time and time again was once again here and healthy. He longed to trace over old scars and perhaps see if he could taste and lap up the blood and pain itself on his skin. 

But all he can do is weep for him.

His brother is broken.

His desire and sorrow must show upon his face, because Jerome tilts his head and furrows his brow shakily, reaching out, and Jeremiah lets his eyes close as his brother's other cool hand cups his cheek.

Finally, he lets out a meek whimper, and the tears that had been welling up in his eyes for years in the dark and behind God's back finally spill over.

Tension continues to unwind itself from his shoulders as he opens his eyes to meet Jerome's battered matching ones. They match in many ways. They're smiling, and they're crying, and then they're reaching out and holding each other and never letting go. He hasn't felt so alive in years.

He ruined his brother.

Jeremiah wants to destroy him.

Being a teenager was overwhelming hate and overwhelming love at the same time.

__-'-__

The asylum was darkness and solitude for Jerome. He was tied down, thrown aside to the brainless hounds of the place that made him nothing but immensely disgusted. Not that he couldn't fend them off, oh no, but it irritated him. The thing that irritated him the most, however, was how he was being wasted. 

He was a genius. He could do anything he damn wanted to, and they had him cooped up in this little madhouse, where the doors are bars and the most exciting thing you get a day is a different colour of lunchtime slop, or a mild beating if you got lucky. He scoffed, swiftly running a hand through his hair, and standing up with a drunken sway that only came from being forced to drink things he arguably shouldn't have, or being surrounded by drunk men for so long that all you did was give up and blend in. 

Well, almost give up. He wasn't that moronic.

Jerome dug into the hole on the underside of his mattress- if you could call it that- and pulled out the pair of thick rimmed glasses he'd had smuggled in for him. He had quite the knack for manipulation, and this hellhole was no exception. He was a master puppeteer, countless blood- covered strings tied to his fingers made of wound up pieces of intestine and playing out his little show with a delighted grin upon his face.

But this wasn't about entertainment to anyone else. Their poor, poor souls were missing out. Maybe that's how they'd gotten here, he mused. But no. This was about survival.

Jerome knew he wouldn't survive. Not like this.

He treated the glasses with care, the complete contrary to how he had when they were young (and extremely foolish) and put them upon his worn-down face. Grabbing the little fingernail of a shattered mirror from the corner of this dwelling, he searched for light like a rabid dog and held the mirror up to his face. 

The mirror was so miniscule that he only got fragments of looks, but it was more than Jerome could withstand without them. His dependency upon anybody else would have made him laugh in fits, clutch his aching sides like the humour had stabbed him right below his ribs, deep and painful and valueless. But with Jeremiah it just fitted. He was meant to love him. It only made sense. Nobody else could.

"I-" he began, voice breaking off in a whisper and a choke. He wanted to pour out all his emotion before giving up and telling to to fuck off, and it probably would.

"I wanna get out of here,  
hold you until it stops,  
and I will never, ever disappear.  
I'm gonna love you until all of my bones are broken and I'm rotten into this wretched Earth.  
We'll be together again."

He wanted him back.

Being a teenager really hadn't been what everyone talked it up to be.

"...I love you, Miah."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos mean the literal world to me, but you getting this far is more than enough. Hopefully you enjoyed.


End file.
